99 books like Dear Rachel Maddow

Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood famously rocketed this book to the top of the bestseller list four years after its publication. Whatever you’ve heard about this inventive epistolary time travel romance, I promise you that it lives up to that hype. It won me over immediately with its lyrical prose, clever sci-fi conceit, and charged romantic tension between dueling protagonists.

I love dystopian fiction, but there’s something even more impressive about well-written utopian fiction. I’m even more impressed when authors remember that our various visions of utopia can be in conflict with one another and with our own individual connections and desires. Time War weaves poetry out of the multiverse and had me sobbing over two women who would rather burn down every world than lose each other.

Let’s just be honest here: We know we all love this book because of the feels that we experience once that twist hits us, right?

I don’t want to ruin it if you’re not familiar, but once Charlie comes to terms with this very important moment, we empathize with his complicated feelings and we support his recovery, even if it means that certain people in his life will be looked at in a very negative way.

This book reminds us of how important it is to heal, even if the things we have to do to get there may not be something that others (or even we) want to face. 

Andy Weir has. In my opinion, come to define hopepunk: pushing towards a goal through difficulties, even if the goal doesn’t personally benefit the character.

His depiction of the plight of Mark Watney, the impacts Watney’s plight have on a global scale, and the hard science behind it all combine to create a compelling story. The sacrifices his crewmates and NASA officials make to push his rescue forward exemplify the “community over self” attitude common in hopepunk.

Nic Stones’s first book is a classic. When an altercation between a retired white police officer and his best friend turns violent, Justyce, a Black teenager, is forced to examine what it means to be a Black in America.

Writing letters to the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a journal that Justyce keeps helps him come to terms with this challenging reality.

There are several true-crime books about foreigners who have been killed whilst residing in China, notably Paul French’s Midnight in Peking (which should be read together with its dismissive detractor, A Death in Peking by Graeme Sheppard). Despite its brevity (only 60 pages), Mara Hvistendahl’s And The City Swallowed Them holds its own in the true-crime genre as a well-researched work of investigative journalism covering the stabbing of a Western female model working in Shanghai in 2008. Hvistendahl’s shocking expose focuses in equal parts on the seedier aspects of modern expat life, China’s marginalized peasant working class, and the country’s opaque justice system.

Michele Harper’s memoir is beautifully written, and her compassion and empathy shine through.

I was deeply moved by the way in which she carried that clear-eyed compassion forward from a trauma-ridden childhood through her medical training—where she, as a Black woman, experienced both racism and sexism—and into her life as an emergency room physician. I admired her forthrightness in calling out these injustices as she saw and experienced them while still maintaining her own humanity. I was inspired by her integrity and by the way she showed us, through her own life and the lives of her patients, that, as she says in the epilogue, “[b]rokenness can be a remarkable gift.” 

Homophobia appears to have been the least of Jack Charles’ worries. If it ever bothered him, he barely lets it register in this memoir of a creative life lived both on the fringes and in the spotlight. Perhaps that’s the point, that his eloquent, good-humoured approach always seemed to scotch the haters right from the get-go. In an unbendingly honest self-reflection, Charles also pulls off describing himself as a “poof”, a very Australian term of derision that has been reclaimed by many. His ‘born again’ tale similarly relates how he survived in the face of terrible prejudices endured by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders—the First Nations people of Australia—and their vibrant, resilient spirit. An uplifting gem.

This is a searing memoir about siblings—Annabet and Anders—who grew up in an abusive household in a privileged Sydney suburb; but it is also the author’s search for the reasons behind her gay brother’s suicide. Anders Ousback became an accomplished restaurateur and potter, yet Annabet explores how despite this success, he never really outran his demons. She courageously searches for their source, using his surviving journal as clues, and what she finds throws up an incomplete and terrifying picture of a young gay Australian boy faced with the ‘rules’ of gender and sexual politics in postwar Sydney, where gay men were expected to pretend to survive. The real red herring in this story is unforgettable.

A page-turning journey through the motivations, passions, and secrets that led to a shocking crime; but also a long-overdue look at the elements of Brokeback Mountain that have always existed in Australia's rural heartlands. Assisted by a key survivor of the Wettenhall family drama—Bob Perry—Drinnan takes a very personalised look back at a rural dynasty’s fortunes, but also the social, legal, and cultural restrictions for same-sex-attracted men in Australia from the 1970s to the present day. Australia is a nation said to have been built on the sheep's back, yet the truth about gays in this nation's bush culture is only just emerging. Drinnan's book sharply spearheaded the discussion into the mainstream while documenting Perry’s journey from the closet to liberation.  

Danny Kelly is a living, breathing gay Greek protagonist, and the choices this driven young competitive swimmer faces about loving relationships—while he’s in the pursuit of athletic prowess—are written with a resounding ring of truth. Tsiolkas’ visceral sex scenes, underpinned by gripping descriptions of the desires behind the mechanics, speak to much more than the act itself. They go to the heart of identity in a novel with so many layers of self-definition: the migrant, the working class hero, the quintessential male, the stereotypical gay, the success story, and the abject failure. That Danny escapes his ambition alive is a miracle, and it has everything to do with digging deep and staring down expectations.